


You Never Fought With Us

by Cant_We_Just_Dance



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Breakups, M/M, PTSD, War, blood mention, death mention, ptsd mention, thomas cant cope with alex, war mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 19:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12488952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cant_We_Just_Dance/pseuds/Cant_We_Just_Dance
Summary: “You never fought with us!” Alexander screamed, tears welling up in his eyes as if they were the sparks of fire that had been put out far too long ago. “YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT WAS LIKE!”





	You Never Fought With Us

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this is @jamisahivemind from over on tumblr! Make sure to comment, kudos, and hang out with me over on the hellsite! Please heed the warnings in the tags!

“You never fought with us!” Alexander screamed, tears welling up in his eyes as if they were the sparks of fire that had been put out far too long ago. “YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT WAS LIKE!”

Thomas’s heart twisted further against itself than it already had, tangling into unmanageable strands of pain stuck together with barely clotted blood. His hair lay flat against his cheeks from being soaked in tears, the curls having been tamed by premature grief for the man in front of him. 

“…War was nothing you ever had to cope with…” Alexander whispered, dropping the glass bottle in his hand and letting it clatter out to the hardwood floor beneath his feet, already soaked with amber liquid from earlier bursts of unwanted memories. “The way each scream you heard was cherished because it might be the last thing you ever hear. How each drop of blood made you thank the universe that it was someone else’s. You never had to deal with pretending to be mending something when you already knew that the life in something was gone, empty.”

“…Isn’t that what I’m doing right now?” Thomas asked softly, voice hoarse from having remained quiet throughout the majority of Alexander’s argument. And in many ways, he was entirely correct.

Alexander had only gotten back home from deployment two years ago. He’d ran out from his airport terminal and into Thomas’s arms with a mess of giggles and emotions that couldn’t be properly conveyed through the late night/early morning Skype calls. As soon as the two men had kissed sufficiently and arrived at their home, Alexander got down on one knee and pulled out a glimmering diamond ring, shining just as brightly in the light as Thomas’s tears did now.

Instead of allowing Alexander to drone on for what was most likely going to be a half-hour long speech, Thomas had picked him up and spun him around happily, proclaiming ‘yes’ over and over again, until it seemed as if it were the only word in the world. Thomas would later be informed that tightly squeezing Alexander around the waist was in fact, not a good thing for the shorter man. Had something to do with a four-letter acronym that stood for a disease Thomas had never truly thought could affect Alexander. His Alex was too strong for that, too independent- but he must have been wrong. After all, why else would Alexander be on the slew of medications that now permanently resided in their bathroom cabinet?

At this point, Thomas had become intimately familiar with the tiny print on the side of the orange bottles, listing all side effects and instructions and dosage and the same little warning on each and every one- Do Not Consume With Alcohol.

Alexander hadn’t been particularly good at following that rule.

So as the man screamed at his fiancee, voice verging on fury with each syllable, Thomas asked himself if this was what he wanted. If the world he truly desired to live in was one where his love had come back from a war, only to bring it back home to him. If soft kisses were alright with being swapped out for a cold side of the bed as Alexander paced up and down the halls at night, in order to protect himself from imaginary intruders, the only footsteps being his own echoing through the house.

…No. This wasn’t Thomas’s life.

And as he tugged off the engagement ring from his finger and set it down on the coffee table, he knew, somewhere deep down, that Alexander wouldn’t run after him if he walked out the door right this moment.

Sure enough, Alexander stayed in place, simply watching as Thomas left the burning wreckage of the life they’d built together.


End file.
